Buyers have spent more than a decade doing more and more of their home searching online – but could 2015 be the year agents finally get to join them in their bunny slippers and conduct their showings that way, too? With the advent of 3D tours, some think the time has come.
In recent months, a variety of startups have emerged in the space, including Uther Interiors, Vieweet and Matterport, while more traditional real estate photographers and video tour providers like RTV are also beginning to offer the service. A number of luxury brokerages in New York City have begun offering 3D tours on all their listings. Web-centric brokerage Redfin has trained agents in some of its markets, including Boston, to begin providing the technology, while local brokerages including Charlesgate Realty in Boston and Newton’s Realty Executives Esteemed Properties have also begun to use it for their listings.
“Everyone starts their search online these days, so I think anything you can do to make that process easier for the buyer, help them get a sense of the property, is a net positive for marketing the listing,” said Michael DiMella, co-broker-owner of Charlesgate.
While different companies may use different proprietary software to create the tours, essentially, the technology involves a special camera that takes pictures in many directions at once, creating a 3D model of the home as it goes. Trained agents or photographers reposition the camera around each of the home’s rooms from several different vantage points to ensure complete coverage. The separate shots are then stitched together into a continuous whole using special software.
All Flaws – And Claws – Apparent
Scott Driscoll, a Redfin listing agent who began using the cameras last fall, said it takes him about an hour or so to take photos for a small condo, while a sprawling colonial might take several hours to fully capture – similar to the time required for a still photo shoot for professional listing photos.
The end result is perhaps most similar to that of a traveler puttering around a map using Google’s Streetview – potential buyers visitors can jump from room to room, looking around in any direction from their current spot and zooming in to inspect a bathroom fixture as they would to read a street sign.
It’s not 100 percent seamless, however. As anyone who’s ever tried to take a panoramic shot with their camera knows, moving objects that jump into frame while a shoot is in progress can leave some strange blurs and other oddities behind.
It’s easy enough to usher agents and owners out of the room, but the sudden appearance of a cat has impacted a few of his shoots, admitted Driscoll. And any reflective surfaces in the home will tend to show the camera itself as it takes the shot, a particular problem in bathrooms and kitchens. Unlike a still photo shoot, where any such flaws can often be fixed, the complex knitting together of many images required for 3D tours makes it difficult to airbrush away errors.
“A home really has to be camera-ready. [The 3D camera] will even pick up dust balls on the ground. So it’s a real motivation for the homeowner to make everything picture-perfect, because it will be captured, whatever it is,” said Driscoll.
Going With The Flow
In addition to the convenience factor, 3D technology can really help potential buyers understand the “flow” of a home – how one room connects to another. Being able to view a room from many different angles conveys a better sense of space than any still shot, agents said. And it’s far easier for most people to grasp how different features relate to each other by using the tours than with a traditional architect’s floor plan.
Marie Presti, broker/owner of Realty Executives Esteemed Properties in Newton, was an early adopter of virtual tour technology, and had experimented with a few different versions.
Ultimately, “I know my buyers love the ability to look in a 360-view of a property and envision themselves standing in an exact position. I’ve heard, time and time again, ‘I saw the virtual tour, and it really gave me a good feeling for the house,’” she said. “I’d say more than half of the buyers out there can’t just look at a two-dimensional [floorplan] and know what’s off of where, how to visualize it.”
Not every agent is so enamored with that aspect of the technology – some prefer to give buyers as many reasons as possible to visit a home in person, feeling that getting a buyer to see, touch and smell the home enables it to put its best foot forward to a prospective purchaser.
And some feel that interacting with the tours – some software can be slow to load or buggy, especially on older computers – can actually detract from the listing overall.
“When I played around with some [3D tours], I thought that the process was still too cumbersome and slow. In my opinion, I don’t see the technology being ready yet,” said Deb Agliano, also known as “Deb on the Web,” a Medford-based ReMAX agent. “For now, I’m going to stick with photos, video and floor plans to show my listings.”
Email: csullivan@thewarrengroup.com
